This data collection, designed to improve the quality of
children's testimony in court, evaluates how different types of
interview formats affect the completeness and accuracy of children's
recall performance. Specifically, the study assesses the impact of a
"practice interview" about an event on the completeness and accuracy
of later reports about a second, unrelated event. Three interview
conditions were employed, and each condition consisted of both a
practice inter... (more info)

This data collection, designed to improve the quality of
children's testimony in court, evaluates how different types of
interview formats affect the completeness and accuracy of children's
recall performance. Specifically, the study assesses the impact of a
"practice interview" about an event on the completeness and accuracy
of later reports about a second, unrelated event. Three interview
conditions were employed, and each condition consisted of both a
practice interview and a target interview. The three conditions were
RS, RC, and CC, where "R" represents a practice session with
rapport-building only, "S" represents a target interview that
contained all components of the standard interview procedure, and
"C" represents either a practice or target interview that contained
all components of the cognitive interview procedure. In
rapport-building sessions, interviewers talked about school
activities, family life, and favorite games with the child. In
standard and cognitive interview sessions, the rapport-building
sessions were followed by a request from the interviewer for the child
to verbalize a narrative account of "what happened" during an event
that had been previously staged by the experimenter. This narrative
account was then followed by the interviewer's request for additional
information about the event. Cognitive interviews also included
several additional questions that were hypothesized to improve recall
performance. The number of correct items recalled and the number of
incorrect items generated were used to compare the performance of
children in the three interview conditions.

Methodology

Sample:
Convenience sample of 34 third-graders between the ages of
8 and 9 years, and 56 sixth-graders between the ages of 11 and 12.

Data Source:

personal interviews in a clinical setting

Version(s)

Original ICPSR Release:1992-10-31

Version History:

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

1999-12-14 SAS and SPSS data definition statements and a PDF
version of the codebook have been added to this collection.